July 04, 2009
UTNE READER

Too much of a good thing?

The hidden perils of wabi-sabi

September/October 2001
By Karen Olson 
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WABI-SABI SECTION
Wabi-whuh?
-Jon Spayde

Wabi-Sabi: The Art of Imperfection (print only)
-Robyn Griggs Lawrence

Living wabi-sabi (print only)
-Marcia Tyson Kolb

Exquisite decay (print only)
-Leonard Koren

Too much of a good thing?
-Karen Olson
Discuss Wabi-Sabi at the Globe forum in Café Utne's: cafe.utne.com

RELATED CONTENT

Once you discover wabi-sabi, the art of imperfect beauty, you may be tempted to analyze the wabi-sabiness of your life and everything around you. Believe us. Here in the Utne Reader offices, we know. Art director Kristi Anderson has a renewed fondness for her family’s tattered and unreliable hammock (above). Editor Jay Walljasper muses on the Liberty Bell as the ultimate symbol of American wabi-sabi—or maybe Bill Clinton. And me—I’m pondering the wabi-sabi nature of potholes and romantic breakups.But the beauty of wabi-sabi can easily be tarnished. In line to become the next feng shui, another Eastern aesthetic that could easily be co-opted into a marketing device, wabi-sabi needs to be handled with care. Ask yourself whether you’re adopting wabi-sabi as a way of seeing and being in the world—or as a convenient justification to buy new stuff, even if it’s old new stuff. Ask yourself whether you’ve been seduced by faux wabi-sabi, that new-that-just-looks-old trend found in furniture with distressed paint, "worn-in" jeans, and Meg Ryan’s hair. And be wary of the following pitfalls:
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